Budget cuts take hits from both sides

Facing a two-front war on the left and right, the House Appropriations Committee voted, 27-22, Tuesday evening to move ahead with Republican plans for cutting close to $40 billion from domestic and foreign aid spending over the last seven months of this fiscal year.

Democrats were united in their opposition, but more important for Republicans was the loss of two of their own Western-state conservatives – Arizona Rep. Jeff Flake and Rep. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming — who voted “no” to protest the cuts being too small.

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In a prior closed-door caucus, a third Republican, Georgia Rep. Tom Graves, had also threatened to bolt before being brought around by the committee leadership.

But in a striking display of defiance, Flake exercised his right to file alternative views in the committee report — something rarely done in Appropriations by a member of the majority party.

Coming on the eve of what could be a stormy House Republican conference Wednesday morning, the back-and-forth underscores the challenge now facing the GOP as it tries to make good on its promise to roll back domestic appropriations to levels last seen at the end of the Bush administration in 2008.

The $40 billion in cuts is a major first bite but only takes Republicans halfway to their goal. And when added defense dollars are factored into the equation, the net reduction is closer to $32 billion — a small fraction of the $1.5 trillion 2011 deficit facing Washington.

The leadership has vowed to come back and finish the job when the House considers 2012 appropriations bills next summer, but tea party supporters want more cuts now while they still have the political momentum from November’s elections.

Wednesday’s conference should give some better measure of how strong this sentiment is. But fearful of angering their large freshman class, nervous party leaders are already giving ground, and the Appropriations Committee is left to take the fall even before its bill — due Thursday — has been fully aired.

The background to the fight now is the collapse of the budget process in the last Congress, leaving the entire government subject to a series of continuing resolutions, or CRs, since last Oct. 1. The latest extension is due to expire March 4, and Republicans hope then to confront President Barack Obama with a seven-month CR that would fill out the 2011 fiscal year ending Sept. 30 but also exact real cuts from his requests.

There’s genuine danger — especially if the leadership loses control of the debate — that events could spin out of control and lead to a government shutdown. But the bigger debate is how far, and how fast, to force agencies to adapt to the 2008 target, an average reduction of about 18 percent below 2010 spending.

“Let us do no harm to the fragile economic recovery that is just beginning,” said Washington Rep. Norm Dicks, the ranking Democrat on Appropriations. “The medicine we give the economy should sure it, not kill it … and budget cuts of the magnitude you propose … will only serve to put the brakes on job growth, according to mainstream economists.”

Republicans countered that business will be more willing to hire and invest, once government has shown more restraint in its own spending. “The taxpayers are telling us…`Discipline your spending,’” said Rogers.

But when the chairman went so far as to describe the package as “a jobs bill,” his friend on the panel, Rep. David Price (D-N.C.), shot back that that would be “wishful thinking.”

While the draft bill remains under wraps until Thursday, the contours of the measure have begun to take shape in recent days.

The allocations show that labor, health and education programs face some of the biggest cuts; together with transportation, community development programs and housing. And while Republicans vow to help preserve funds for frontline states like Afghanistan and Yemen, the State Department is fearful of a 7.5 percent cut from 2010 funding for its operations budget and foreign aid.

Elsewhere, there appears to be a concerted effort to protect select accounts, such as the FBI or Indian health services. The National Science Foundation is expected to survive with about a $70 million cut, for example, and thus far the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities have yet to be eliminated.

Bigger accounts, like the Environmental Protection Agency, are likely to be cut more to help offset these concessions. For Appropriations members, the task is make the cuts, but in a way that agencies can best adapt to the 2008 target.

“We’ve tried to be very thoughtful in how we’ve done it,” said Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), who oversees the Interior Department and EPA budgets. “And there have to be some reductions in areas that even I don’t like. But those areas that actually would impact human health and that kind-of-stuff like Indian health services, we tried to make as little impact as we have and then these other areas have taken a bigger hack.”

The defense portion appears to be the most detailed, and in many respects mirrors the Pentagon budget Democrats offered in December as part of an omnibus bill blocked by Senate Republicans. All together, about $13 billion would be trimmed from Obama’s 2011 request – including an extra $3 billion after congressional earmarks were stripped out of the Democratic version. But total spending would still grow by about $9.6 billion — and some in the defense industry still worry about further cuts on the House floor.

In the case of the Homeland Security Department, spending is largely frozen at 2010 levels but this belies a serious shortfall in disaster aid accounts, which could force significant reductions. The trims in military construction accounts often mirror decisions in the defense authorization last year, and the Department of Veterans Affairs is largely left intact, but for some savings from information technology programs.

Once the bill hits the House floor next week, the committee’s decisions will be second-guessed by conservatives looking for added savings. But the panel is not without its own advantages when it comes to precluding its critics from adding new rescissions by amendment.

If the bill already rescinds funds from a specific account, an amendment can be used to expand on that cut. But if the committee holds back and keeps those potential rescissions in its pocket so to speak, they are also shielded from floor amendments and can be a reserve for future bargaining as the bill moves next to the Senate.